SIMLab's experience in Kenya: Implementing a mobile money management tool and training approach in the last mile
This case study describes the midterm progress and learning from a two-year project, funded by the UK Government’s Department for International Development (DFID). The project introduced a new mobile money management software to forty ‘last-mile’ organizations, all of which faced significant infrastructure, access and capacity constraints making the transition to cashless processes cumbersome and unpredictable. This case study seeks to shed light on the challenges of extending mobile money to the last mile, through a human and organization-centric lens. Although the project operated only in Kenya, but with the learning is applicable globally.
Mobile Money in the Last Mile of Kenya
The Brookings Institute’s Financial and Digital Inclusion Project named Kenya as the top scoring country in the world for financial inclusion based on country commitment, mobile capacity, regulatory environment and adoption of traditional and digital financial services. Yet, SIMLab’s efforts to introduce to mobile money to organizations in rural Kenya have encountered significant barriers to adoption and sustained use by organizations and end-users alike.
Building A Better Everything
In June, I had the opportunity to participate on a panel at the University of Montreal’s Cyberjustice Lab. I chatted about how we use our mission and values to inform our day-to-day work, and felt it might be helpful to put some of what I talked about in writing, to help explain just what it is that we do here.
Paper Houses, Digital Homes
“All the land records against this wall have been scanned.” Stacks of land records—browning paper tied together with string—lined the walls, the tables, the shelves. White receipts with markered labels flopped out of some of them; processed and scanned. The tahasildar beamed, visibly proud at the progress his office had made. Still, stacks of titles remained, and still more remained unrecorded. And any new records would also be delivered on paper, awaiting digitization.
Open First, Ask Later: Rethinking Data Ethics Among International Agencies, Donors, and NGOs
Aggregating and opening data presents opportunities for deepening civic engagement, addressing decades-long environmental coordination challenges, or highlighting inefficient institutional processes and procedures, among many other potential uses, benefits and information gains. The same data, branded as a public good, is also the subject of many debates regarding risks, agency, and privacy among others. There is a rising need to sort out the ethics of use and power dynamics over decision-making when it comes to open/ing data for ‘development’.
First Resort: Building social services resources at DC Public Library
Despite the wide range of social and legal services available in American cities, it’s not always easy for a person to find the right service provider—or often, set of providers—who can help. Service providers, from lawyers to social workers to case managers, have deep expertise helping people solve problems, but sometimes, it may not be obvious that someone should, say, call a lawyer in addition to a food bank if they receive a letter that food stamp benefits have been cut off. A single story may require the help of multiple experts, and multiple services, in order to meet a person’s need.
Sign up for our upcoming course on using mobile for CSOs
We are excited to open applications for Social Impact Lab’s upcoming online course, “Scalable, Low-Cost Technologies for Civil Society Organizations”, which will run from 24 February- 5 May 2015. You can apply here.
Navigating A Crowded Landscape: Digital Tools in Humanitarian Response
In November 2014, CDAC Network spoke with Laura Walker McDonald about using technology in humanitarian situations. We’ve reposted it with their kind permission. You can find the original here.
Improving Disaster Response and Aid Delivery with ICTs
As some of you may know, we’ve had many exciting new developments over the last few months, some of which were covered in our first blog post here. SIMLab’s focus on helping organizations to use inclusive technologies to build systems and services that are accessible, responsive, and resilient means that we’re now tool agnostic, but many of our case study resources for a while will continue to draw on our work with the Frontline product set.
What I meant to say at... The New York Techsalon, on our hopes and fears for 2015!
Welcome to a new blog post series, in which we post a rough account of what we said at events and on panels, based on our notes. The probability that the text makes more sense than the spoken word did—and includes fewer bad jokes—is high.